TOP TEN MOST RIDICULOUS MOMENTS IN COMIC BOOK MOVIE HISTORY

Comic Book films have come a long way from the days of Adam West in chincy satin Batman tights spraying a rubber shark attached to his leg with “Bat Shark Repellent,” but just because Hollywood studios have learned to give comic fans faithful, serious takes on superheroes like The Dark Knight or Watchmen, doesn’t mean there’s a shortage of cheese being served up at the cineplex.  Even the most grim, ultra-realistic depictions of caped and cowled avengers feature head-scratching scenes, moments, gags, one-liners, and hell – even entire sub-plots – chock full of idiocy. Here then, is a look at ten of these incredibly ridiculous moments in comic book movie history.

10.) Punisher Parkour

Hollywood has attempted to successfully adapt the Punisher to the silver screen three times, and they’ve completely missed the mark on each and every one of them. The most recent crack at the character, Punisher War Zone, came the closest to a faithful and suitably dark adaptation, but it was ultimately dragged down by a cheap Saw-esque look and a fair share of absolute squirrel-nut zippery craziness. In addition to some very over-the-top gore, War Zone features this silly scene where the Punisher miraculously hits a free-running street thug in mid air with a rocket launcher. I’m not sure what’s more ridiculous here, the fact that he is able to hit the parkour guy in mid-jump, or that there is no trace of blood or flying limbs, despite the previous scenes of  Frank punching a bloody hole in a guy’s face and another thug getting his face blown away by a shotgun at point blank range.

9.) Green Lantern’s Hot Wheels Racetrack

So let’s say you have just been chosen to become a member of an intergalactic peace-keeping corps, and given a magical power ring that can create anything you can think of. Now let’s imagine a scenario where you have the opportunity to be a big hero by using said ring to save hundreds of people from being chopped into bloody bits by a helicopter careening out of control. Now, the logical thing to do would be to create something like a giant, glowing green catcher’s mitt that will contain the helicopter and gently lower it to the ground without turning anyone into ground sausage, right? Nope. Not if you’re writing the screenplay for Green Lantern. Then you’d idiotically have Ryan Reynolds create a giant glowing Hot Wheels© racetrack, and place the chopper inside a big green racecar that actually made the damn thing go faster and careen even more wildly out of control, making the situation 100% more dangerous. Brilliant.

8.) Superman’s Schoolyard Games

I can’t claim to have read every Superman comic in existence, but I have perused more than my fair share of the Man of Steel’s adventures, so I think I can say with the utmost confidence that at no point in the 70-plus years he’s been around, has Superman ever been able to make duplicates of himself that he can then teleport around a room in an effort to fool evil (and stupid) Kryptonian criminals. Nor has he ever removed the “S shield” from his chest, magically transformed it into a giant piece of cellophane, and thrown it over anyone in an attempt to deprive them of oxygen, either.

All of this is mere prelude to the true bugfuck craziness happening in this strange sequence of events in the Fortress of Solitude. At one point, Superman turns to Lois and says that he “played these games on the schoolyard and was never very good at them.” This is mind blowingly insane, because either A.) The writers forgot that Kal-El was only an infant when he was rocketed to Earth and never had a chance to attend Kryptonian elementary school, or B.) Superman was implying that he would deflect laser beams with his hand or suffocate normal human kids with giant cellophane “S shields” on the playground at  Smallville elementary.  Either way, it’s frighteningly crazy and makes absolutely zero sense.

7.) Daredevil’s See-Saw Flirt Fight

This idiotic sequence dovetails nicely from the “schoolyard” shenanegans of Superman II, as we are treated to more playground tomfoolery by Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner in 2003’s crap-fest Daredevil. In this ludicrous scene, blind lawyer Matt Murdock (who is secretly the blind, red-clad avenger of the night, Daredevil) is stalking and sexually harassing socialite Elektra Nachios (who is secretly the deadly ninja assassin umm…Elektra), while she is just trying to walk down the street and mind her own business. Murdock follows her to a schoolyard playground and continues his persistent stalking tactics in an effort to get her name. She tries one more time to shake the creep, but he grabs her arm, igniting an impromptu kung-fu fight on the playground which eventually spills over and onto the teeter-totter.

Now imagine if you have never read a Daredevil comic book in your life, or knew absolutely nothing about the character and you randomly came upon this sequence on a Sunday afternoon on the FX channel of Ben Affleck playing a blind dude trying to whack Jennifer Garner with his walking stick on top of a see-saw. You’d probably say, “what in the name of fuck mountain is this, and why am I watching it on FX? I think need to go outside and kiss girls!”  Hell, even in context this scene is horrible and stupid.

6.) The Hulk Battles Mutant Pooches

I’ve previously mentioned these ridiculous gamma-irradiated schnauzers  in the Top Ten Lamest Villains from Superhero Movies list, but the sequence in which they battle the Hulk certainly deserves a spot in this piece as well. Basically what happens here is that The Hulk’s insane and abusive father David Banner (played by a crusty and disheveled Nick Nolte) is doing his own home experiments with gamma radiated nano-whatevers, juices up three dogs with them, (one of which is a fluffy white show poodle), and sends them off to attack his son for a reason that is too stupid for me to remember right now. The end result of this is one of the most bizarre and ridiculous fight sequences in movie history. The dogs end up looking as ludicrous as you would imagine – creepy and cartoonish – almost like the dog towards the end of The Mask with Jim Carrey.

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